Old style toy shop, Nippori, Tokyo, April 17, 2004. Bessa-L, CV 21mm f/4, Fuji Neopan 1600. Click for additional images.
Last weekend we went to see something that in a short time will be no more: the last remaining vestiges of the once thriving Dagashiya Yokochou (literally “Mom and Pop Candy Store Alley”) in Nippori, near Ueno. At its height in the Showa 30’s (1956-66), the candy and toy stores in this area numbered around 120, but now just 7 stores remain, and in a short time, these too will go, as the area to the east of Nippori station awaits the wrecking balls that will precede imminent redevelopment.
The area became one of three main “sweets and toys” districts to spring up after World War II, when sugar was rationed under the U.S. occupation and enterprising black marketers, led by the Japanese mafia or yakuza, set up shops catering to the sweet tooths of a populace sloughing off the bad taste of war and destruction. The largest of these, Ameyoko in Ueno, which numbered some 300 candy and toy stores in its heyday, still thrives today though in a much different guise. (The third was in Kinshicho, out past Ryogoku in Sumida Ward.)
If you want to see the alley, and it is just that, a narrow 2 meter-wide alley, you’ll need to hurry. The wrecking balls are slated to lower their boom sometime in June.
Click on the above image to get to a few more photos from last weekend. Photos from others, as well as more information and background on Dagashiya Yokochou, can be found at these sites (in Japanese only):
http://www.maboroshi-ch.com/rep/inq_05.htm
http://gendai.net/woman/contents.asp?c=064&id=173
http://www.mixpink.com/spot_folder/nippori_folder/nippori.html
http://www.hey.ne.jp/~kaleido/…/kalaido_topics03.htm
http://www.shitamachi.net/wa/totteoki/020616.htm
that just goes to show how much the world reinvents itself to make money.